Review: 'King's Road' Expanded Edition

Carnaby Street may have been synonymous with Swinging London, but the King's Road was swinging centuries before dedicated followers of fashion swarmed Carnaby and a good decade after that street warped into a Disnified version of itself. Henry VIII spent time in the King's Road area. So did Thomas More, Henry James, Noel Coward, Germaine Greer, Christopher Lee, Diana Dors, Aleister Crowley, Bram Stoker, Francis Bacon, and Karl Marx. But it was scene makers like Mary Quant, the Stones, Pete Townshend, and later, the Sex Pistols and The Damned, who really gave the road its character. The Rocky Horror Show debuted there. A Clockwork Orange was filmed at its Chelsea Drug Store, which Jagger immortalized in "You Can't Always Get What You Want". Judy Garland died there. It was where a box for keeping plants alive on long sea voyages was invented, where you could see a monkey ride a pony around a mansion's grounds (if you were around in 1843, that is), where a "mad idiot" was known to visit the night spots with a dyed-green rabbit he loaded up with LSD until the poor pet committed suicide, where a wombat suffocated in a box of cigars, and where the British Spaghetti Queen slipped into a dress comprised of thirty helpings of macaroni. Thirty!

Review: 'Fashion in the 1960s'

The 1960s were not always rich in substance (welcome to Gilligan’s Island!), but the decade’s style was often unimpeachable. Before frumpy hippie non-fashions took over toward the end of the sixties, sharp lines, vivid colors, eccentric materials, and wild op-art patterns defined the decade. The sixties were also very notable for making a place for men on the runway. It seems like we’ve been shut out of genuinely exciting fashions ever since.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 134

The Date: February 11

The Movie: Blow-Up (1966)

What Is It?: Michelangelo Antonioni uses a shaggy-dog murder mystery as a way into critiquing the superficiality of Swinging London culture, inadvertently glorifying its great music (The Yardbirds impersonate The Who), fashions, and free-love ethos.

Why Today?: On this day in 1934, iconic Swinging London fashion designer Mary Quant is born.